Diana and Actaeon

An accident becomes a threat

Actaeon has stumbled upon Diana and her companions bathing. The stag’s skull above the fountain points towards his fate: Diana will turn him into a stag, and his own hounds will kill him. Titian shows the encounter before that transformation. ^[1]

The hunter stands on the left with his hands raised. Across the water, Diana draws a white cloth over her head. The space between them is filled with figures turning in different directions.

What happens in the story?

The subject comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Actaeon is out hunting when he accidentally reaches the goddess’s secret bathing place. The National Galleries of Scotland describes Titian’s arrangement as a way of making the intrusion dramatic, with the skull anticipating the punishment. ^[2]

At the bottom right, a small dog bares its teeth towards the hunter’s larger hound. Far above them, the antlers extend into the branches. The story’s ending is already present as an object in the scene. ^[1]

Titian changed the hunter’s reaction

The finished gesture was not Titian’s first idea. The technical study by Jill Dunkerton, Marika Spring and colleagues shows that Actaeon originally leaned into the scene with a hunting spear. Titian tried different positions for the spear before changing the pose. The hunter now recoils, and the spear has disappeared. ^[3]

The changes reached beyond Actaeon. The seated nymph holding the curtain originally looked towards him; she now looks towards Diana. Another nymph, whose back we see, originally faced the intruder. Infrared examination made these earlier arrangements clearer. ^[3]

Compare the raised hand with the figure under the curtain. Their gestures belong to one exchange, rather than a row of separate poses.

How the colour was built

The same study identifies ultramarine in the blue distance, above an underlayer containing smalt. The smalt has lost much of its colour with age, affecting the sky’s appearance. It also identifies malachite in bright green passages and vermilion in red details. ^[3]

The red curtain is a large, nearly continuous area of colour. Beneath it, the pale cloth on the seated figure breaks into folds. At the far right, striped fabric sits beside Diana’s white drapery.

A painting made to have a companion

Philip II of Spain gave Titian considerable freedom in choosing subjects for his mythological paintings. Titian called them poesie, presenting pictures as equivalents of poetry. Diana and Actaeon was paired with Diana and Callisto; the stream connects the two compositions. ^[5]

The National Gallery’s account distinguishes The Death of Actaeon from that delivered pair. Titian intended it for Philip but never sent it. It shows the later part of the story, when the hunter’s body has begun to change and his hounds attack. ^[5]

The surface has a history too

The painting we see today has been through several conservation treatments. Jacqueline Ridge and Marika Spring describe Stanley Kennedy North’s work in 1931-32, including his unusually detailed records, and the later treatment in 1998-99. Their account explains how old coatings and restorations have affected its appearance. ^[4]

One painting, two collections

Titian painted Diana and Actaeon in 1556-59, in oil on canvas. It measures 184.5 by 202.2 cm. The National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland bought it jointly in 2009. London records it as NG6611; Scotland uses NG2839. ^[1][2]

The two museum records describe the same canvas.

Ridge and Spring trace the picture through the Orléans collection and into Britain in 1793. It entered the Duke of Bridgewater’s collection in 1798. ^[4]